Has anyone figured out how to get people to stop sending them the e-mails that say things like "You have 20 minutes to send this e-mail to your friends to tell them you love them"? I have two people who send stuff like this and it is irritating.

What e-mails do you speak of? I've never seen one...............................because they end up in my trash bin

Along with other annoying forwards and such, no, I've never had any success in getting someone to stop sending them, at least not without the person in question becoming angry and defensive. I haven't tried again in years, I just ignore them.

I have to add an "I wonder" to this myself, though: when people e-mail you the Big Scary Warning Stories, is it automatically rude to reply with a link to the Snopes article debunking it? Can you make it less/not rude with text like, "Hey, I know stories like this pop up from time to time, and I learned that this site is great for telling me what I need to take seriously and what's going to get me worked into a panic for nothing. It's a wonderful resource and I'd love to share it with you!"

I do think asking not to be on their "forwards list" is an acceptable thing to do "Friend, I know you like these things but I get so many emails in a day I'd prefer not to receive them, please take me off your list".

However, I have one friend who is so superstitious that she forwards these annoying missives to everyone she knows to get eternal happiness/win a fortune/avoid some tragic accident etc. I know she can't help forwarding them so I help her out by just deleting them.

But you can't tell your mother not to mail you the glurge (after all, she sends them because she loves you) and the warnings about the Very Important Dire Computer Virus (you know, the one that will not only give YOU a Dire and Ultimately Fatal Disease, but will also affect your other household electronics, so you should always wash your hands after using the computer so you don't infect the toaster or the electric kettle.)

I've sent Mom the snopes links many times, and asked her to check it herself before forwarding stuff. But if Aunt Nancy has sent it to her and the message body says "Snopes says this is true!!!!!!" Mom doesn't bother to check herself. She's 86 and not very computer savvy. If she gets a message from her girlfriend that says "So funny! Click HERE!" she not only clicks there, she forwards it. And then wonders why her virus-blocker alerts her to malware, because Good Friend wouldn't send her a virus, would she?

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My cousin used to send me emails demanding I resend them to everyone in my address book within 10 minutes, or something bad would happen to me or my family.

I emailed her one day after receiving one and asked her why she would send me something like that? If she really believes it to be true enough to pass on, it's almost like she's daring fate to hurt me or the people I love. If she cares about ME, why on earth would she send me something like that?

I Know This Guy . . . I know this guy whose neighbor, a young man, was home recovering from having been served a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.So anyway, one day he went to sleep and when he awoke he was in his bathtub and it was full of ice and he was sore all over. When he got out of the tub he realized that his kidneys had been stolen, and he saw a note on his mirror that said "Call 911!"But he was afraid to use his phone because it was connected to his computer, and there was a virus on his computer that would destroy his hard drive if he opened an email entitled "Join the crew!"He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer who was working on software to save us from Armageddon when the year 2000 rolls around.His program will prevent a global disaster in which all the computers get together and distribute the $600 Nieman Marcus cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates.(It's true-I read it all last week in a mass email from Bill Gates Himself, who was also promising me a free Disneyworld vacation and $5,000 if I would forward the email to everyone I know.)The poor man then tried to call 911 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but reaching into the coin-return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle around which was wrapped a note that said, "Welcome to the world of AIDS."Luckily he was only a few blocks from the hospital-the one, actually, where that little boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone in the world to send him an email and the American Cancer Society has agreed to pay him a nickel for every email he receives.I sent him two emails and one of them was a bunch of x's and o's in the shape of an angel (if you get it and forward it to twenty people you will have good luck but ten people you will only have ok luck and if you send it to less than ten people you will have bad luck for seven years).So anyway the poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving along without his lights on. To be helpful, he flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation.And it's a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages.

But you can't tell your mother not to mail you the glurge (after all, she sends them because she loves you) and the warnings about the Very Important Dire Computer Virus (you know, the one that will not only give YOU a Dire and Ultimately Fatal Disease, but will also affect your other household electronics, so you should always wash your hands after using the computer so you don't infect the toaster or the electric kettle.)

I've sent Mom the snopes links many times, and asked her to check it herself before forwarding stuff. But if Aunt Nancy has sent it to her and the message body says "Snopes says this is true!!!!!!" Mom doesn't bother to check herself. She's 86 and not very computer savvy. If she gets a message from her girlfriend that says "So funny! Click HERE!" she not only clicks there, she forwards it. And then wonders why her virus-blocker alerts her to malware, because Good Friend wouldn't send her a virus, would she?

Your mom needs NetNanny - just installed this myself to stop my mother from donwloading "anti-virus software because your computer is infected" - approved list of sites only now and amazingly the frantic phonecalls have stopped...

I second gynlyn's idea; but it is missing the note at the bottom telling them that if they don't send it to 100 people in the next 10 minutes their computer will explode, the refrigerator will stop working, and the washer and dryer will detach from the wall, or whatever the warning is.

My cousin used to send me emails demanding I resend them to everyone in my address book within 10 minutes, or something bad would happen to me or my family.

I emailed her one day after receiving one and asked her why she would send me something like that? If she really believes it to be true enough to pass on, it's almost like she's daring fate to hurt me or the people I love. If she cares about ME, why on earth would she send me something like that?

She has never sent me another one.

I have also had some limited success with that.

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